


drabbles

by tigriswolf



Series: Alternate Universe [248]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Families of Choice, Gen, Non-Canonical Character Death, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm rewatching Leverage and it reminded me that most of my Leverage fics have never been posted here. </p><p>This is three of them I wrote not long after the first time I saw season 2.  Anything we learned after that has not been incorporated, so they're all slightly AU.  (Well, except for the last one.  That one's majorly AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and that was his funeral

**Author's Note:**

> Title: and that was his funeral  
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Whitman  
> Warnings: spoilers for 2.13  
> Pairings: none stated  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 390  
> Point of view: third

His name was Bobby Parker and he was six years old. Her name was Bethany Marshall and she’d just turned eight. Bobby had never been on a bike before, so Bethany taught him how to ride. She even borrowed their foster parents’ actual kid’s bike for the day.

Neither Bobby nor Bethany saw the car rocketing around the corner, and the driver didn’t see them. He wasn’t drunk or high or exhausted. He was just in a hurry.

Bobby died on impact and the driver stayed with Bethany until the paramedics arrived. She sobbed in his arms and was moved to a new place before learning what happened to him. She never even knew his name.

After that, Bethany Marshall kept to herself and quit trying to be friends with people. When she finally took herself out of the system, she changed her name so that she wouldn’t ever forget.

Hardison sometimes reminds her of Bobby Parker. He has the same joyful, carefree laugh. She wants to laugh along, and pull him close, and keep him from ever leaving.

So when the skeevy fake psychic tears open her wound for the whole world to see, Parker isn’t ashamed of running away, or of her tears. But she is so angry that she knows she’d kill him if he stood in front of her right now.

She wants to hug Hardison. More than that, she wants to cuddle Bobby, but he’s been dead for twenty years. So she’ll settle for destroying the fake’s credibility and his career.

And after the case is over, after she and Hardison give the lady all that money, she goes back to that road and sits on the grass and remembers laughing with Bobby. Teaching him to ride a bike and pick a pocket. Sharing stolen cookies. Cuddling after lights out and whispering the lullabies she can barely recall her mother singing.

She isn’t surprised when Hardison plops on one side of her and Eliot silently settles on the other.

“You okay?” Hardison asks softly.

Parker wipes her eyes. “Yeah,” she says. “But I want to steal something.”

Eliot says, “We can do that.”

Bobby died on this road. Sometimes, when she thinks about it, Parker knows she was born here.

It wasn’t a fair trade, but she’ll make do, with these brothers who love her.


	2. pack mentality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a moment in the season 2 finale where I can _see_ the instant Eliot Spencer realizes he may have to kill Nate Ford.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: pack mentality   
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: spoilers for the season 2 finale  
> Pairings: none stated  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 145  
> Point of view: third

He stares at Nate, wondering what happened to the man who formed their team, who led them—the Nate they came back for, as Parker said. So little of that man remains, except this Nate is even worse off than the first one Eliot met.

Eliot will watch Nate’s back, for now. He owes the man that much. But if Nate’s actions or shortcomings threaten Parker and Hardison, Eliot will grab them and run. He’d die for Nate, but he won’t let either of them. He’ll stash them somewhere safe and come back, do his best to help Nate—whether Nate appreciates it or not, he is part of Eliot’s family and Eliot protects what’s his.

But Parker and Hardison come first, and looking Nate in the eye, Eliot knows he’ll kill Nate if that’s the only way to keep them safe.


	3. well then, game over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: well then, game over  
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Richard Siken.  
> Warnings: spoilers for both seasons  
> Pairings: none stated  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 445  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: perish

Whenever he imagined this moment, he thought it’d be… more. Just _more_. Spectacular or awesome, or something. Not like this.

He can hear them, Parker and Sophie and Eliot and Nate. Their first true job as a team again, after Nate got out and Sophie came back. Their family, whole again.

He coughs, spitting out blood. Not good. Not good at all, and “Y’alright?” Eliot asks through the com. Clearing the way home. Sophie’s distracting the mark, Nate’s securing another exit, and Parker’s in the vault. He’s their eye in the sky, their safety net.

“Fine,” he says. “Just… keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

“Hardison?” Parker says. “You sound—”

“’m’fine,” he interrupts her. “Just get out.”

He’s really cold now. They think he’s in the van—no, no, they don’t. He killed Lucille for Nate. He should make sure Nate knows he’s not angry about that anymore, because he’s not. Lucille stayed with him for years, ever since Nana gave her to him after graduation, but Lucille wasn’t—she was a van. And he has the team now.

“Nate,” he says, carefully enunciating so they don’t realize how much trouble he’s having with words. “Nate, I’d kill Lucille for you again, if I had to.” 

Nate doesn’t respond because he’s conning a guard, but Eliot says, “Hardison, what?!”

Hardison’s not in their new van, the nameless and soulless hunk of metal that’ll never replace Lucille. The van is in the right place for the team, but Hardison had to distract the bad guy’s goons, and he’s so cold. And his mouth keeps bleeding for some reason, but he can’t find the wound with is tongue, and his whole body hurts, but only his mouth is bleeding, which makes no sense at all.

“Hardison!” Eliot shouts. “We’re at the van—where the fuck’re you?!”

“It’s… it’s been an honor…” he slurs, and even he can hear how little control he has over the words. “Y’all’re the be-best team a thief… could ever work with.”

“Find him!” he hears over the headset he took from goon numero uno. “He has to be here somewhere!”

Smiling, knowing his family is searching around the van and’ll be safe, he flips the switch and lights the villain’s headquarters on fire.

He won’t be cold for long, and maybe this death isn’t how he always imagined dying—but Parker and Eliot and Sophie and Nate are safe, and that’s what’s important.

“It’s been an honor,” he says again, unsure if they can even hear him. “I love all y’all. Take care’a each other, ‘kay? I love y’all.”

He takes out his com and notices he’s not cold anymore.


End file.
